Nelson, tents and beach

15/11/12
Absolutely hot day and consequently quite exhausting in the car.  We said goodbye to the noisy trucks and cars going over the bridge and have had them replaced here in Nelson by an aeroplane leaving the airport every half hour or so.  Surprisingly it's not as noisy as it was in Blenheim.

Picton: Sounds and boats.  Difficult to capture the
beauty of this harbour on film. 

The trip to Picton was fine and easy and took less than half an hour.  We wandered around for a while checking it out, enjoying the water and the boats - the Interislander in her berth - and the sunshine.  Found a secondhand shop that also sold antiques and it had a huge range of stuff from all sorts of vintages.  Bought a potato masher for a dollar, since we discovered last night that along with the lack of potatoes we didn't have a masher either.  Tempted by some other things, including the bus outside the building that was offered as a trade-in - it was fitted out as a campervan - but managed to control ourselves.  Also found a secondhand bookshop, a very good done, and finished up buying an Ian Rankin that I don't think I've read: Exit Music.  I think it was supposed to be the last Rebus book, but the most recent book by Rankin brings Rebus out of retirement, and also includes the characters from the two Complaints books, who, curiously, come across as different characters in this new book - it's like they're seen as different because we're seeing them through Rebus' eyes.  Consequently we get very little insight into Malcolm Fox in this new book.  I had a bit of a discussion with the proprietor of the bookshop about the way paper books are being taken over by electronic versions; naturally he wasn't very impressed by the latter and thought a monopoly would eventuate and cut lots of people out.  However I think it's a transition time, like it or not, and we'll have to live with it somehow. Books as such don't seem to be going out of fashion as yet.  There was a good secondhand bookshop n Blenheim as well as a very good new books bookshop, staffed by at least five people.

We checked at the info place about just how hilly and winding the Queen Charlotte road was and, on the basis of what they said, decided it was too hilly.  Just as well, as the road from Havelock to Nelson was not at all pleasant to drive on.  Up to Havelock it was fine, running along through a lovely valley (the Rai Valley, I think?) but a few miles after Havelock it climbed up into the mountains.  That wasn't too much of a problem - it was the endless trip downhill again that nearly drove us crazy with its constant twists and turns, and with trying to keep the car from going too fast.  With all the weight on board I don't much trust the brakes to hold us if we have a problem.  When we were coming back from Christchurch after our last trip there, and Celia was driving, the car was doing an awful shuddering thing as we came down the Kilmog, which made Celia very nervous (not to mention me!)

We stopped off in Havelock for lunch near the water, and were joined by a very fluffy cat who just sat beside us without demanding anything, in spite of the fact that we were eating sardines (not on toast, but on pita bread - we'd run out of ordinary bread).

Tahuna Beach, Tahunanui.  You can just see some of the
dozen or so surf kites people were practicing with.

Anyway after our long trip down the neverending hill, we got to Nelson - and began to breath normally again.  We'd decided to stay at the Tahuna Beach motor camp, which turns out to be 54 acres of campervans, tents, cabins, motels and whatever, all within spitting distance of the sea.  It's a good place but when we tried to get the tent up, the wind just wouldn't let us.  We decided to try a different tent site since we were told it didn't matter which site we used but while that was a little less windy, we still had enormous trouble getting the tent to sit properly. The front kept blowing inwards and in general not looking right.  The rest was okay, but the area round the door bent inwards.  Turned out that one of the rods had split badly, so it's not surprising that it wouldn't take the strain.  Celia had already repaired another one on site and we'd got that in place - she'd repaired several split ones before left home - bit in the end the tent was just plain wonky and was going to get wonkier.  We capitulated and hired a cabin instead, which meant taking the tent down again.  At least that was a much quicker job than the two attempts we'd made to get it up!   The cabin is a standard one but in fact is better than the so-called de luxe one we had in Kaikoura.  It doesn't have a sink, which was an advantage at the other place, but it has a fridge and a telly.  It would sleep four if necessary, so we have a choice of beds.

Celia's happy to start heading home after we've been here for a couple of nights.  She's over tenting for the time being, and in fact, given the relative price of the cabins, it's not worth all the hefting and heaving and shoving and back-breaking that the tent takes to get up, just to save a few dollars.  She'd had plans about going into more remote camp sites, like the DOC ones, but that idea went west after we'd been at Waitaki Waters, and had spent some time at Marfells Beach.  I think she's realised that we're getting a bit past all the hassles of camping, although she enjoys cooking on her gas stove - making pikelets on it near Glentunnel and cooking eggs on the side of the road near Makikihi were both highlights.

Now we have to figure out how to get home without too many mountain roads like the one we went on today.  Looks like we can avoid going back to Blenheim, by going down through the middle of the island but I think that road is a winding as well.  Anyway, we'll see how it goes.  We can stop between here and Christchurch and again between Christchurch and Dunedin if we want.   That'll take us through the weekend and into next  week and that'll be enough.   We'll probably stop overnight with my daughter and her family on the way back as well.

Geraldine: 2nd and 3rd days of the Holiday

Notes written on 8.11.12 

After we left Waitaki Waters, we stopped not much further up the road for a cuppa.  It was an official rest area, situated right next to a river - but I'm not sure what river it was.  It may have been the Waitaki.

After we'd had our drink, we walked down to the river, onto the pebbly beach, and finished up playing at throwing sticks in the water and seeing whether they got into the main current or not, and then throwing stones at them to shift them. This wonderfully childlike operation took quite some time, but as the preacher at church had been saying on the previous Sunday, there are times when Time isn't of any importance.  This was one of those.


We had plenty of time between Waitaki and Geraldine, so we took the detour into Waimate, a place we’ve never given more than a passing glance to before.  We stayed there for about an hour all up; I discovered the lovely church, and Celia bought herself a pair of secondhand jandals for $2 (that she subsequently never used because they hurt her toes; once upon a time the only thing she wore was jandals!).  We went to the supermarket and found the statue of the man sitting on a log of wood; there were two rather aggressive bull mastiff type dogs sitting nearby, chained, but tending to growl at passers-by 

Church in Waimate

We travelled on and stopped in Makikihi (where they make the chips) to have some lunch (I'd always thought the spelling was Mahikihi, but Google tells me I'm wrong).  We could see the sea in the distance but couldn't quite find the road to it, which didn't matter.  In the end we stopped on a bit of grass on the side of the road across from a field utterly full of some wheat kind of growth, still green and only about two foot high, got the new gas stove out (that Celia's been dying to use) and had boiled eggs.  Delicious! (though a little difficult to hold, since we didn't have egg cups.  Celia improvised, as she always does, using a rubber glove that is intended to holding hot items from the oven.  Not sure what that was doing on board, but...)

Gas stove with billy boiling (eggs inside)

We lunched on a long deserted piece of road, but in spite of that two women walked past at different times. One, a Dutch lady, had a relation of Marley, our dog (we'd had to leave him behind with a good friend).

In Timaru I finally managed to get to see the Aigantighe Gallery - it's pronounced Egg and Tie, apparently. I've always missed making the detour to it before.  It had an exhibition of Aoraki Polytechnic students' work on in its main gallery, and that was pretty good, but the permanent collection was more interesting.  Some Frances Hodgkins, which as always didn't greatly appeal, some lovely works by C F Goldie, and three or four Colin McCahon, one of which was four tiny paintings in a black surround: two of them just glowed. Quite the most appealing McCahon I've seen, I think.

And onto Geraldine where the large camping area is in the middle of town (like the other place it's not very full, which is nice) and where this morning the birds have been singing their hearts out since 5.30.  One blackbird was doing a solo about 4.30, which is when I was first awake. It was a glorious phrase by phrase song with each phrase quite different.  (We'd gone to bed about 9.30, I think, so being awake that early wasn't entirely surprising.

This camp is rather more full of signs telling you not to do things than the very welcoming Waitaki Waters (and you had to ask at the office for any cutlery or crockery, rather like kids going to their Mum for permission), but it's a good site, and the weather has been great.  It gets very cold at night at present, so last night we added an extra blanket each - Celia of course insisted on bringing these and of course was right! - and that made a big difference.  We're going to stay another day here: we found that there's a big garden area along by the river with rhododendrons and places to walk and sit so we'll go over there and just take it easy.

Getting the tent up hasn't been fraught with trauma even though it's a bit of task but in general.  It doesn't take too long, though I actually had to lie down after I'd been hammering in the pegs, as I was feeling a bit dizzy.  I lay down on the seat on the outside table next to our tent, got Celia to pull me up because I couldn't manage it myself and then felt as if I was falling off the edge of the world.  Very odd feeling.

The birds are still going strong - it's nearly seven-thirty, and I'm looking out while I type this at the wonderful green grass, the massive trees, the bushes.  What a wonderful spell of weather we've been blessed with considering that it was hailing and raining and utterly cold on Monday!

Later on the 8th (Thursday)

We've just spent about an hour talking to a couple from Cornwall who've been touring around NZ.  They're retired teachers and one of their sons is a teacher by trade as well, although I don't think he's been doing it for some time; it's more lucrative in the IT world into which he fell by default.  They've got a son who's just moved to Qatar as well, and they've spent a big of time in a small town in Uganda with an ongoing project assisting women with adult education.  They were interested the Kiva loan scheme as something that might help them support the people in Uganda.

We've had a fairly quiet day, not going far.  Spent the morning mostly just reading in the sun - it's been beautiful today - and then we walked down by the river and read down there for a bit, and then went and visited the 1066 shop where they sell handmade knitted garments in the front sections, beautiful stuff with a variety of colours woven into them, (as well as the biggest woollen pullover in the world) and in the back is this metal mosaic copy of the Bayeux Tapestry, of all things!  This guy, Michael Linton, has spent 20 years and about two million tiny metal pieces (which came from parts of commercial knitting machines) putting this thing together.  Wikipedia notes that Linton's creation is an approximately half scale mosaic version of the Bayeux Tapestry.  It was created over a period of twenty years from 1979. The work includes a hypothetical reconstruction of the missing final section of the Tapestry—events up to the coronation of William the Conqueror on Christmas Day 1066.

Linton is a man with a mind that enjoys puzzles, and he's included an intricate puzzle in the tapestry copy that no one has solved yet, though a couple of schoolboys made great strides into it one day.  He also invented half a dozen puzzles that are distinctly difficult.  We somehow managed to buy one, as well as the DVD Rom on a pen drive which not only has all the tapestry on it, but all the books he consulted, illuminated manuscripts, puzzles, games, brass rubbings and much, much more.  And then on top of that we bought a book of puzzles in which you have to decode letters into numbers by deduction.  We spent about two hours this afternoon and only finished two of them!

Later a photographer came by wanting some footage for a promo on Geraldine that she's making and so we became temporary film stars. We've also been high on the popularity list of a particular blackbird that's been cheeky enough to sit on the table while we're feeding.

Not the best shot, but it gives some idea of what we saw. 

Before we had our tea we drove up the hill nearby and discovered a walk through the bush.  I went on my own and Celia picked me up at the other end - after she'd discovered a beautiful view of the Alps nearby.  So we haven't gone far but have fitted in quite a bit of reading and talking and puzzling.   And puzzling over the way the camp manager approached us and implied that we'd been using the power without paying for it.  We told him that we'd paid what the person at the desk told us was the cost, yesterday, but he gave the impression we'd tried to hide using it because Celia put the cord away before we went a walk!  I felt quite niggled at being unjustly accused, and even when I went over to sort it out at the office the women there (not the one who'd served us yesterday) still ignored what I had to say and basically gave the impression it was somehow our fault they'd undercharged us!  All this fuss over $3 a day.  It would have been better for their PR if they'd just said there was a misunderstanding and told us to forget about the additional money.

Nice and tidy as this place is, we've been a bit underwhelmed by the kind of 'punitive' attitude the signage takes around the place; this bit of nonsense over the power confirmed our feeling that this wasn't our favourite camping ground....